The Yorkshire Film Archive collects, preserves, and shows film made in, or about Yorkshire. Our collections are non-fiction, dating from the 1890s to the present day, and providing a rich and visually compelling record of all aspects of lives, cultures, landscape, industries, major events and everyday activities, many of which are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
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After Eights: Terrace
A world away from zany humour, Richard Lester shows he can also capture the easy opulence of the upper class nibbling After Eight mints.
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Overview
Apart from the unlikelihood of candles remaining alight outside on a British summer’s evening, this ad for After Eights has the ring of authenticity. Our elegant, and clearly wealthy, dinner party guests are sat outside on the terrace of a country house sipping wine from their fine cut glasses, having fine conversation, and enjoying a plentiful supply of After Eight mints, beautifully shot by Richard Lester in 1965, the year he was directing the Beatles in Help.
This is one of a large collection of films made by Rowntree’s of York (now Nestlé), most of which are adverts for their confectionary products. From the their creation in 1962 right through into the 1980s Rowntree’s marketed After Eights in ads year after year as the kind of chocolate the well-heeled set would eat, as “unashamed luxury”. Richard Lester would have made this ad sometime in between directing the Beatles in ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and then in ‘Help’, as well as directing Rita Tushingham in ‘The Knack … and How to Get It’, which was also released in 1965. Lester was one of many film directors still establishing themselves making television commercials at this time.
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